When Earth Reigned Supreme (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 12) (7 page)

The massive complex had to be the processing center for the raw food being brought in from multiple universes. From here, the finished product would exit the complex in an equally impressive display of choreographed efficiency, to be distributed throughout the Colony.

With a trillion hungry mouths to feed, this had to be just one of countless spaceport processing centers scattered throughout Sol-Kor space. Where this one was located was what concerned Adam the most.

Drake switched the view to the north, and Adam heard an audible gasp from the members of his team.

Beyond the grounds of the wide spaceport, a sloping plain rose up to meet a towering bluff, capped by a high ridge that the drone sensors placed at an elevation of a thousand meters above their present altitude. Adam had been on dozens of alien worlds in his time, but he had never seen something that looked this alien, this ugly and foreboding.

Atop the ridge, seemingly built haphazardly out of various sized blocks of a mottled black and gray, rose a series of raggedly-shaped pyramids. The arrangement of their blocks followed no logical, symmetrical pattern except to form the basic shape of a pyramid. The structure appeared to be off balance and with huge gaps along the edges, giving the whole thing a craggy, disorganized look, as if blocks were added when needed and without regard to placement or aesthetics.

Several of these pyramids bordered the ridgeline, with one taller than the others, even as its neighbors challenged the main structure for supremacy. Each structure staircased down to almost the base of the ridge before another grouping of blocks began to grow upwards to form the neighboring pyramid.

The image zoomed in as close as it could, and Adam and the team could see more detail within the row of craggy pyramids. Each structure was connected to the one next to it by a series of tubes, and even from this distance they could see pods moving within. In addition, they could make out windows and doorways on the individual building blocks. Drake sent the size estimates of the blocks to the team via the HUD, and they found that most blocks measured four hundred feet across and one hundred feet high. The peak of the tallest pyramid was placed at seven thousand and eight hundred feet above the altitude of the drone.

A quick count along the ridgeline found eighteen such pyramids before the row ended as the mountaintop fell away.

“Drake, zoom in on the stuff at the base of the bluff,” Adam said.

The image shifted, and it only took a split second for the team to realize what they were looking at: gigantic piles of trash, one at the base of each pyramid, streaming down the mountain and accumulating along the sloping plain. Each pile had to be a thousand feet or higher, and covered by a cloud of native birds feasting on the incredible smorgasbord of refuse.

Drake noticed movement at the base of a pile and panned the drone in that direction. The distance was pretty far, yet the camera was able to pick up a huge convoy of black trucks cycling along the base of the mountains of trash. Following the line of trucks away from the pile led to another huge complex of structures just northeast of the team, huge columns of black and gray smoke billowing from half-mile-tall towers—a power plant, fed by the massive accumulation of trash indiscriminately dumped down the mountain from the huge pyramids above.

At least they’re recycling
, Adam thought. Yet it was the casual disregard for the surrounding environment that sobered him up. The Sol-Kor were pragmatic, single-minded creatures. They only cared for their Colony and the need to feed their massive numbers. Planets of raw material were to be exploited, up to the point where all utility had been exhausted. Then it was time to move on.

Was this Kor, the Sol-Kor homeworld? Or somewhere else? And if was Kor, then was the Queen sequestered in one of the ugly pyramids lining the ridgetop?

If not, then where the hell were they?

“Listen up,” Adam announced, his words picked up by the visor and transmitted to the rest of the team. “We need a hostage. Drake, bring your drone in over the street outside the building and find us a pedestrian, or even a car coming down the street. With this much activity, there has to be someone we can have a talk with.”

With a dizzying movement, the image on the left side of his visor swung along the street outside the grayish-blue building they were in. Immediately they saw individuals moving along a wide sidewalk lining the street, as well as vehicles, though not as many as one might expect with a population as large as the Sol-Kor’s.

“Two targets approaching—east side, fifty meters,” Drake reported.

Adam jumped to his feet, followed closely by Riyad. He pulled out the rubber mask from this utility vest. “Time to see if these things work,” he said to Riyad. “You care to join me?”

“I was afraid you’d say that, but why not? Beats sitting around here on our asses.”

The two men slipped the rubber masks over their heads. Their visors smoothed out the material around the eyes but then the rubber sank dramatically down to the mouth and chin, giving them both the look of having incredibly prominent cheekbones, more than that of most Sol-Kor. Light reflecting off their visors through the open eyeholes made the sockets glow. They tucked the trailing material into the collar of their black armor and turned to study each other.

And burst out laughing. Nearby members of the team joined in, with someone commenting over the comm, “You gotta be shitting me! That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe the shock value will play into our hands?” Riyad said. “I’d stand gawking if anything like the two of us came close.”

“Get serious,” Adam said, before letting loose with another snicker. “The two are about half a block away. We’re going to have to cross the street, grab them and get back here without being seen.”

“I have a better idea,” Riyad said.

He moved to one of the two smaller doors located to each side of a large rollup panel. Watching the image on his visor, he waited until the natives were nearly parallel to the door before opening it. He leaned outside.

“Could you come here? I need your help,” he yelled out. The Sol-Kor voice synthesizer he was equipped with sent out the statement from tiny speakers located on each side of the visor. Both Adam and Riyad had heard the Sol-Kor speak their native language, and they had to give kudos to the developer of the synthesizer program. It sounded spot on.

The two creatures across the street stopped and looked in Riyad’s direction. That’s when the image on the drone revealed they were not Sol-Kor. They were aliens of comparable height—approximately seven feet tall—but definitely were not Sol-Kor. Their skin was much paler, missing scales, and they had four arms instead of two. Adam had seen similar alien design like this before, two main arms and hands, except with a smaller set below the others as well, used primarily for feeding a second, lower mouth than the one on the head, which was used exclusively for breathing and speaking.

The team tensed, wondering if these new aliens would understand what Riyad said. Then the two creatures obediently crossed the street and approached the open door without hesitation.

Riyad stepped back into the shadows and let the two aliens enter, before shutting the door behind them.

Swift, strong Human hands grabbed the tall aliens, pulling the longer set of arms behind them to be secured with nylon ties. The two smaller arms and hands were secured in the front with the same binds.

They were frisked and then moved further into the room and placed on hard mats that rested along a twelve foot long bench, the Sol-Kor equivalent of a couch.

To Adam’s surprise, neither of the aliens put up the slightest resistance, nor did they express any shock. They simply complied without any emotion at all. Adam grimaced, thinking they were probably mindless drones, maybe not even capable of speech.

“Do you understand me?” he asked, after removing his mask, his voice still that of a Sol-Kor.

“Yes,” the two creatures said in unison, also in Sol-Kor.

At least that’s a relief,
Adam thought. “You’re not Sol-Kor. What race are you?”

“We are Salifens,” they said again, also in unison.

“Only one of you speak at a time…you.” Adam pointed to the alien to his right. “What planet is this?”

“Kor.”

Adam looked over at Riyad and smiled. Then he turned his attention back to the alien. “Where is the Queen?” he asked, wanting to cut right to the chase.

“The Queen?”

“The Sol-Kor Queen.”

“I do not know such things. My tasks exist within this complex most of the time.”

“What do you do?”

“I carry things. The Salifens are stronger than our masters, so we carry things.”

“Your masters are the Sol-Kor?”

“Yes.”

Adam frowned. He was under the impression the Sol-Kor ate every advanced race they came upon. This creature could speak and form coherent sentences, making it intelligent enough for the Sol-Kor dining table. So why were they not consumed?

“How is it that the Sol-Kor have...slaves? Do you understand the concept?”

“Yes. We are subservient to our masters.”

“Why haven’t they eaten you?” Riyad asked, giving in to his own curiosity.

“On occasion they do, yet I understand we are not to their liking, not unless there is no other food available. Otherwise, we carry things.”

“Why aren’t you carrying anything now?”

“We have already carried boxes to our destination. We are now returning to carry more.”

“What do you carry?”

“Boxes, crates.”

“What’s in the boxes and crates?” He already knew the answer before he asked the question.

“I do not know. That is not important.”

Adam and Riyad walked away, out of earshot. “Dumb as a rock, both of them.”

“They may know more than they realize,” said Riyad. “They’ve seen things, even if they may not know what it meant.”

Adam nodded. They returned to the aliens.

“The structures on the hill, is that where the Sol-Kor live?”

“Yes, most of them.”

“Is there one of the structures that seems to be more important to the Sol-Kor?”

“More important?”

“Yes, do they travel there more often than to the others?”

“The one in the middle,” offered the other alien, speaking for the first time. The other creature nodded.

“Have you—either of you—ever been there before?”

“Yes,” they said in unison. And then the main alien, having sensed the course of the inquiry, said, “I carry things there and back.”

“Of course you do. Can you show us how to get there?”

“Yes.”

Adam turned to Riyad again. “That was easy.”

“If we want to get in through the front door.”

“It’s a start, and we already know where the spaceport is if we can’t locate a portal inside the pyramid.”

“Did you see the size of that place—and the spaceport? You are one fatal optimist, Mr. Cain.”

“It pays to keep a positive mental attitude.”

“Since when…and especially coming from you? I’ve known you for far too long to fall for that bullshit.”

“It’s a start,” Adam conceded. “But we are still going to need a Sol-Kor hostage eventually. These guys will only get us so far.”